Chapter 371 - 249: The Killing Blow

"Medicine has no room for arrogance, and even less for academic fraud."

"You've all grown accustomed to looking down on the world from your ivory towers, to setting the standards for science based on geography, nationality, and even skin color. You think that by controlling the narrative, you can arbitrarily decide the fate of any research, claiming the fruits of others' painstaking work as your own."

"But you've forgotten that in the face of disease, all lives are equal."

"And scientific truth will never bend to your arrogance."

With those final words, Jiang He slipped a hand into his pocket and calmly walked off the stage.

The moment he moved.

Across the entire hall, the very Western academic titans who had been so full of arrogance and prejudice toward Chinese scholars now, incredibly, rose to their feet as one.

One person, then ten, then a hundred.

The crowd parted like the Red Sea, spontaneously creating a wide path for Jiang He.

Everyone stood solemnly on either side, their eyes following him in a show of respect.

The brilliant camera flashes behind him became his silent yet thunderous applause.

Jiang He walked through the crowd to Shen Yu's side, his gaze instantly softening.

He took his wife's hand and said softly, "Let's go."

Shen Yu suppressed the storm of emotion and pride within her, maintaining her dignified composure as she nodded gracefully. "Yes."

The three elderly Chinese professors followed behind Jiang He, their heads held high.

Tears streamed down Zhou Deming's face, but he laughed with utter satisfaction. He straightened his spine, only three words running through his mind:

—So damn satisfying!

The inferiority complex that a generation of Chinese medical professionals had felt toward the West was shattered today—utterly and completely shattered!

He even unclipped the conference name tag from his chest and casually tossed it onto a table.

From this day forward, Chinese doctors would no longer have to bow to anyone!

Hopkins? Professor Miller?

—Verdict: Nothing special!

In the media section at the back of the hall, keyboards clattered furiously:

"This is huge! An absolute front-page headline!"

"Hurry! Send the story to headquarters! We need to publish before the *New York Times* gets it!"

"What's the angle? What's the angle? What's the angle?"

"Twenty-One-Year-Old Genius from the East Shatters Hopkins!"

"I think this could work: 'The True Cost of Plagiarism.'"

"Are you nuts?!"

A Reuters reporter frantically hammered the Enter key.

But after the progress bar on the webpage spun a couple of times, it froze.

"Damn it, why is the internet down?" The editor-in-chief of a medical journal nearby slapped his mouse in frustration. "There's no cell service either!"

The loss of internet was clearly just the beginning of the disaster.

Overhead, the beautiful brass chandelier suddenly emitted a jarring sound.

The light in the auditorium instantly dimmed.

Gasps and cries of alarm once again filled the hall.

Jiang He tightened his grip on Shen Yu's hand, pulling her close to protect her.

A moment later, the hall's double wooden doors were thrown open.

A staff member from the outer reception area burst in, covered in ice and snow. He yelled:

"There's an emergency!"

The staffer rushed onto the stage, snatched the microphone, and shouted:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the main communications tower outside has collapsed under the weight of the blizzard! An extreme ice storm has made landfall in Baltimore, and the state government has just declared a state of emergency at the highest level!"

"Ten minutes ago, there was a massive pile-up on I-95. A fully-loaded intercity bus went right off an overpass!"

In the winter of 2008, the infrastructure for cell towers was extremely vulnerable to natural disasters.

The loss of internet and power, combined with the extreme cold, meant the entire city's infrastructure ground to a halt in an instant.

The staffer's voice was laced with panic:

"The blizzard is intensifying, and outside rescue crews can't get through. The emergency room at Johns Hopkins Hospital is a living hell right now! We're seeing a constant influx of patients with crush injuries, traumatic hemorrhaging, and severe hypothermia!"

"But... more than half of the city's ambulances and on-duty doctors are trapped on the roads by the blizzard!"

"The chief of surgery at the emergency center is begging all doctors in Turner Conference Hall... to head to the hospital for support immediately. They're about to be overrun!"

His words sent a shockwave through the room, and the hall instantly erupted into chaos.

But this wasn't chaos in the traditional sense.

After all, most of the people present were exceptionally skilled physicians.

The chaos stemmed from one question: how to get to the hospital to help as quickly as possible...

In the dim light, Wen Xuyang suddenly remembered something Carter had said the day before.

—If you faced a real emergency, what could a twenty-one-year-old boy genius doctor actually do?

The United States has a law called the Good Samaritan Law.

The law is designed to protect individuals who voluntarily provide aid during an emergency outside of a medical facility from legal liability.

In other words, in an emergency like this, Jiang He might just have a chance to show what he could really do!

Wen Xuyang grew excited at the thought.

He immediately turned to Jiang He. "Dr. Jiang, what's the plan? How are we getting there?"

Jiang He squeezed Shen Yu's hand and slowly shook his head.

"It has nothing to do with me. I'm not going."

'First, I'm not licensed to practice medicine in the United States. Even with the Good Samaritan Law, if something went wrong during treatment and a patient died, it would be a huge mess. This is a foreign country, after all. I don't have a department director or my mentor here to back me up. Better to not get involved.'

'Second, and most importantly, Teacher Shen is with me. My priority is to get her back to the hotel safely.'

'Call it selfish, call it narrow-minded, I don't care.'

'In this new life, I'm long past the age where I'd sacrifice everything to save the world.'

'Even if the United States of America were strewn with corpses, it wouldn't compare to my Shen Yu's safety.'